Rob and Achordocaster - cable noise really shouldn't be the issue. All USB cables are shielded - there should be no mic cable involved. The Shure X2U device is designed to plug directly into the output of the microphone and convert A/D directly inside the X2U. From that point, any non-shielding issues on the digital audio signal would manifest itself as oddball-digital data corruption noise (think old-school fax transmission squelchy noise), not hum.

Signal chain should look like the following:

Mic-->X2U-->USB cable-->USB port on your computer. No XLR cables should be used unless you simply can't avoid it due to distance between mic location and computer.

Achordocaster - I'm wondering if you tried the powersave setting items I mentioned? Unfortunately, many laptop designs are less caring about audio signal interference inside the laptop as one would imagine. It was quite a surprise to us that the powersave settings and power control on that series of HP laptops (who knows who actually made the laptop - but there's only a few real design/manufacturers for all of the laptop brands) would play such a huge role in the recorded sound quality of the audio.

What was happening is that the PWM control of the power to the screen, created enough audible noise on the power of the USB, that the USB Audio interface picked up and mixed in with the microphone data. Ideally, the USB interface should not have been sensitive to this, but it was. It was somewhat earlier on in the whole practice of sending digitized audio over USB, with a proprietary interface.

I'm very curious to hear about how you resolve this. The X2U is an interesting device that fits in your pocket and would be great to have tossed in the laptop bag along with an SM 57 and a set of in-ear monitors.

-Scott

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